Well we should have held off on our winter unit for a couple of weeks. Then we would have been right in the middle of all the white stuff! I tried numerous times to freeze water in tubs outdoors for the kids to do ice experiments and to have a real simulation of ice fishing. Needless to say, they never fully froze!
Below you will see the block of ice we got semi-frozen so we could use colored salt water in eye droppers to melt the ice. We used tweezers to pick up winter themed erasers, practiced making playdough balls to make snowmen of different sizes, practiced out counting skills using a snowman math grid, built snowmen floor puzzles, and matched colored penguins and bow ties (For the older kids, the back of the page had color word names instead of a colored penguin. Some of the kids are starting to read the words or use a "cheat sheet" to figure them out.) We practiced out scissor skills and our throwing skills with "sock" snowballs, made winter pattern block pictures, and matched colored snowflakes!
We continue to learn about patterns by making pattern snowmen with shapes and making scarf patterns with colored popsicle sticks for the stripes. We assembled giant snowmen on the rug and used shaving cream was our pretend snow since we did not have any (at the time). We went ice fishing and caught colored fish with magnetic fishing rods.
Kids loved adding cotton balls into numbered hot cocoa cups! Penguin topple was very tricky. The more penguins you added to the iceberg, the harder it was to not let them fall. Building towers with giant marshmallows was a blast to watch as they came tumbling down! We used magnifying glasses to look at tiny stamp sized snowflake pictures so we could match them to the larger sized snowflakes. The Roll A Snowman game was all about rolling a dice and drawing which body part the dice number correlated to (ie. a number one was "draw a head"). When they kids were done, they got to add additional details to their pictures. My favorite was making snowflakes with q-tips! The kids enjoyed using water color paints on snowflake shapes.
Have you ever read the story, "The Mitten"? I love the version by Jan Brett! Check out her website sometime, as she has beautiful pictures and activities. We reviewed the story using her beautiful animal pictures. Mrs. D turned into a snowman while singing a cute little song. We fed penguins fishy crackers as we listened and followed directions (ie. "put a green fish cracker under the penguins feet"). The best part was getting to eat the crackers for snack time! We found a hidden snowball under colored mittens. The AM Kids practiced their colors and had to request which mitten to look under using a whole sentence ("Look under the green mitten" or "Is the snowball under the blue mitten?"). The PM Kids had to ask using the written numeral on the mitten. We sorted plastic animals by whether they like cold or warm places to live. PM kids did an activity about Penguins Are, Penguins Have and Penguins Can. This was really tricky because they had to come up with precise statements such as "penguins are black and white, penguins are animals", "penguins have flippers, penguins have feathers", and "penguins can lay eggs, penguins can eat fish". We also learned about footprints and tracks that animals leave in the snow.
Sensory activities were the hit this week. Mrs. Hill made fake snow with the kids using a special material that when you add water, it explodes up and over the cup because it absorbs the water. It is similar to the material used in baby diapers! They really enjoyed playing with the slippery stuff since we did not have any of the real stuff yet! Later we did have real snow for the water table. They loved using the snowball scooper and wearing real mittens. Our sensory table had white rice in it with penguins made out of lima beans to search and find. Kids sorted fish crackers into colored buckets. First they would pick a card that would have either one or two colored fish on it.
